December 6, 2018 - Have you ever wished you could get a glimpse into a large set of books, articles, or documents, quickly get an idea of what they’re all about, and zero in on the one you should read first? Rapid text analysis is a critical need for researchers and anyone doing a literature review or trying to grasp a high-level overview of the concepts in a large body of text.

A collaboration between OU scholar of Islamic studies Dr. David Vishanoff and the Exaptive software developers led to a new tool that is changing the landscape of text analysis. The tool uploads a set of text files, runs vocabulary analysis on them, and creates a zoomable word cloud. The word cloud shows which words tend to occur together, plots your texts onto that discourse map, and lets you explore.

Dr. Vishanoff and Exaptive machine learning lead Josh Southerland described the tool and how it works at the December Data+Creativity Meetup. Click here to watch the archived video of the live stream event.

In January 2019, the Data+Creativity Meetup will feature Dale Spoonemore. He and his wife learned to code specifically to provide free access to urban gardening strategies and information about how fresh food impacts mental health. Come hang out with us!